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Sexual harassment remains problem for church, survey says

Sep. 20, 2005

NOTE: Audio and related reports - UMNS stories #519-520 - are available
at http://umns.umc.org.

By Linda Bloom*

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (UMNS) - Sexual harassment remains a problem within the
United Methodist Church, and laity need more education about the issue.

Those are among the preliminary findings from a sexual harassment survey
distributed early this year by the denomination's Commission on the
Status and Role of Women. A previous survey in 1990 defined sexual
harassment as any sexual-related behavior that is unwelcome or offensive
or fails to respect the rights of others.

The Rev. Gail Murphy-Geiss, a Colorado clergywoman and past president of
COSROW, presented data from the survey responses during the commission's
Sept. 15-17 annual meeting in Cambridge.

More than 6,000 surveys were mailed to people in a variety of positions
within the church, including local church pastors, seminary faculty and
students, bishops and district superintendents, general agency and
jurisdictional conference staff, annual conference staff and lay
leaders, and staff/parish chair people of local churches.

Of the roughly 1,300 responses, nearly 85 percent were from women and
about 60 percent from laity. The mean age was 51.

The responses showed a significant difference between clergy and laity
in terms of awareness of United Methodist policies on sexual harassment,
according to Murphy-Geiss.

"Gender did not make any difference in awareness," she said. But she
added that few women knew where or how to report harassment.

A full 67.3 percent of the respondents said they had experienced or
observed harassment "of any kind." The type of harassment ranged from
leers to unsolicited touching to pressure for dates to, in a few cases,
attempted or actual sexual assault or rape.

Seventy-two percent of the clergy respondents said they had experienced
a form of sexual harassment themselves. That compared with 51.3 percent
of students, 50.6 percent of church employees and 38.9 percent of laity.
The number of men reporting harassment was actually higher than that of
women, but Murphy-Geiss believes that may be because men are now more
aware of the various types of sexual harassment.

The most prevalent type of harassment reported was unsolicited sexual
comments. About 51.3 percent of clergymen responding also reported a
problem with unsolicited letters or e-mails of a sexual nature. Although
there were complaints about anonymous spam, those were not included in
the survey report, Murphy-Geiss explained, because the spam was not
directed at a particular person.

More than half of the incidents of harassment occurred at local
churches, with about 60 percent of the perpetrators of the harassment
identified as lay members, compared with 35 percent of clergy.

The most common response to the harassment was to ignore it, although
47.3 percent did tell the person to stop the behavior. "Sometimes you
have to endure the hassle," one respondent wrote.

Although a few respondents complained that the survey was a waste of
church money, others talked about incidents that led them to leave their
church, conference or even the denomination.

"A parishioner harassed me for three years with verbal abuse," one
respondent wrote. "When he started to get physical, my husband wanted to
go to the police for a restraining order. I called my D.S. (district
superintendent) to let him know. My D.S. said that if I went to the
police, I would never work again."

The problem continues beyond the local church. "It took 20 years of
complaints from seminary students before this pastor was investigated
and removed," a respondent said.

Murphy-Geiss suggested that COSROW conduct focus groups and interviews
across the country on the subject of sexual harassment. "Let's have
people talk a little more about what their experiences have been," she
said.

The full survey report is expected at the end of the year.

*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org

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